American Motorists Insurance v. ARTRA Group, Inc.

RAKER, J., dissenting: CONFLICT OF LAWS CONFLICT OF LAWS with its peppery seasoning, Of pliable, scarcely reliable reasoning, Dealing with weird and impossible things, Such as marriage and domicil, bastards and kings, All about courts without jurisdiction, Handing out misery, pain and affliction, Making defendant, for reasons confusing, Unfounded, ill-grounded, but always amusing Liable one place but not in another Son of his father, but not of his mother, Married in Sweden, but only a lover in Pious dominions of Great Britain’s sovereign. Blithely upsetting all we’ve been taught, Rendering futile our methods of thought, Till Reason, tottering down from her throne, And Common Sense, sitting, neglected, alone, Cry out despairingly, “Why do you hate us? ⁵⁹⁵ Give us once more our legitimate status.” Ah, Students, bewildered, don’t grasp at such straws, But join in the chorus of Conflict of Laws. Chorus Beale, Beale, wonderful Beale, Not even in verse can we tell how we feel, When our efforts so strenuous, To over-throw, Your reasoning tenuous, Simply won’t go. For the law is a system of wheels within wheels Invented by Sayres and Thayers and Beales With each little wheel So exactly adjusted, That if it goes haywire The whole thing is busted.

So Hail to Profanity, Goodbye to Sanity, Lost if you stop to consider or pause, On with the frantic, romantic, pedantic, Effusive, abusive, illusive, conclusive, Evasive, persuasive Conflict of Laws. Thurman Arnold, Fair Fights and Foul: A Dissenting Law- yer’s Life 21-22 (1965) (footnotes omitted). SECOND VERSE If Arnold thought reason had gone from its throne Clear back in T4, 0 now how he’d groan For Babcock and Jackson had a terrible row And seeds of new policy surely did sow. The seeds were from plants nursed in academia’s groves ⁵⁹⁶ And from ’20 to ’60 grew in great droves; But, once out of the classroom and into the courts The profuse little seedlings grew into sports.

Though the new growth was reason supplanting mere rites When growing in Academe’s neat little sites; In real rows the neat rows fit nothing quite right, And we often get darkness instead of new light. But if light be our metaphor, mixed as it is, Old light was dimmer and fuzzy as fizz;' Nothing it showed but shadow to fools Who mistake simple outlines for the sureness of rules. Now New light makes “sense” always the goal And explores each case nuance with the Restated tools So, Lawyers, relax, break up the old straws, And join in the chorus of Conflict of Laws. McLaughlin, Conflict of Laws: The New Approach to Choice of Laws: Justice in Search of Certainty, Part Two, 94 W.Va.L.Rev. 73, 108 n. 65 (1991).

Today, the majority fails to shed new “light” on the murky maze of Conflict of Laws. Instead, in an unwarranted departure from the bedrock of Maryland choice of law in contract cases — lex loci contractus — the majority adopts a “limited renvoi exception.” Majority Op. at 20. In so doing, it unwisely qualifies a solid, predictable rule in favor of the often criticized and rejected doctrine of renvoi. 1 In my view, it ⁵⁹⁷ makes